Hi,

Please correct me if I’m wrong:

 

-       Any (multi-)polygon that only consists of spikes has area 0 (zero).

-       Any (multi-)polygon that has area 0 (zero) and does not have any inside-out or self-intersecting polygons, is either empty or consists of only spikes.

 

As far as I understand, the algorithms in boost::geometry require that input polygons do not contain spikes, and the results of these algorithms can be assumed to not contain spikes either. What’s the definition of a spike? This seems to imply that as long as I only deal with positive-area multi-polygons, zero area should be equivalent to a completely empty multi-polygon.

 

Interestingly, boost::geometry::remove_spikes( “MULTIPOLYGON(((4287 2160,5984 2160)))” ) does not modify the input at all, and this is an example of a non-empty, zero-area multi-polygon that does not seem to contain spikes (b/c remove_spikes does not change a thing). What am I missing?

 

Thank you,

   Volker

 

P.S. Boost 1.55.0, my polygons are oriented counter-clockwise, open and based on int.